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My name is Mary Beth. I am a 48-year-old single mom of one. I am madly in love with my child, despite her blatant attempts to drive me crazy!
There are lots of things I would change, re-write, if I could... Others, I would never change!

UGH! Asthma sucks and some gratitude too!

Sooooo, yeah, it’s been 3 months. Uh huh… No excuses. I mean, not even “I’m having a great time” excuses! Grrrrrr!

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I am probably going to post a couple of times this week. Or at least I’m planning on it. So prepare yourselves (if there is more than one person reading this blog, that is!)

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I’m down 81 pounds – WOOT WOOT!!!! I feel great! No sluggishness, I’m in a size 6-8 pants/skirts and a 12-ish on top (I’m down to a 36DD – it’s a feat if you knew me before!) I think I have a shopping problem… But then again, I need to buy new clothes; the size 20 pants & 2X-3X shirts won’t fit no matter how much cinching is going on!! LOL :) I am NOT complaining! I am enjoying looking good.

So yeah, the puppy is still here. The big dog, still here. The kid, still here. Me, still here. Besides that, not much else… Oh except for the whole kid in hospital part…

So, my lovely, wonderful, tween. I adore her! I can’t imagine life without her. Sometimes, I do ponder strangling her! She’s had asthma since she was a toddler, over the last year or two, it’s been really controlled. So much so, that she didn’t have to take Advair anymore. Yay! She was just on Flovent. I’m not going to even try to sound like I know the difference, but I believe the Flovent doesn’t have an inhaled steroid like Advair. Soooooo, right after school started, she got sick. I made her get right back on Singulair (which we were trying to not take unless she had a flair up).

Then, on September 16th, while I was in a oh so fun All Hands meeting at work, the school nurse called & said Shelby was in distress. Then she called me again. I tried SD, his mother, my grandfather (84 years old) and my mom (so she could get my grandfather). No answers. I’m an hour away. Another call from the nurse, please hurry. We will call the ambulance if we need it. I get to the school and get her in the car. We are about 10 miles from school, she says “We need to go to the ER Mommy” – OH MY GOD!!! We go directly to the ER; the staff doesn’t seem to be concerned. Probably because she looked just fine. They gave her multiple breathing treatments and released her after four hours with instructions to follow-up with her pediatrician in the morning.

Morning comes, she’s still feeling cruddy. The symptoms that started the day before are different. Tight chest. She’s quiet. Still pink. We get to the pediatrician’s office. They give her back-to-back treatments and order me to take her back to the ER and the doctor shows me the fax from the ER and asks me to try to find out why they released her the day before when her lungs were still “tight”.

I took her back to the ER. The intake nurse looks at me like I’m crazy. Her oxygen levels are good, blah blah blah. I explain that the pediatrician sent us and that I wouldn’t be there unless the pediatrician thought she needed to be. We get into a room in the urgent care area. First a nurse and then a Physician’s Assistant listen to my baby’s lungs. Then, she has to use the restroom, so I walk her over there. As I was waiting outside the restroom, I hear the nurse & P.A. talking about how neither could hear any air moving in my honey bunches lungs. OH MY GOD!!! Scared the bejesus out of me. In the meantime, SD shows up. Then, they admit her. Then I inform the hospital about the order of protection. My reasoning was I didn’t want him to try to remove her from the hospital or worse yet, try to make medical decisions for her! We were cool. I left to go pick up some stuff from home. Within ½ hour, I get a call from Shelby telling me that they were kicking SD out of the hospital. Seriously? NOW SOMEONE IS GOING TO TRY TO PROTECT US?!

The nurse gets on the phone and tells me everything is okay, that she told her supervisor and that the supervisor said SD had to leave because of legal reasons. I’m like WTF people? My kid is having a severe asthma attack and you’re adding to her stress! She’s in the hospital; just let him stay until I get back. Nope. I was really trying to do right by my baby. Then, the cops call from her cell to tell me how wrong I was to allow him to be at the hospital. Seriously? You’re going to do this now? When I’m trying to get back to the hospital to be with my child who is ALONE?! Yep, that’s what I’m doing. Nice.

I get back to the hospital, things calm down. Shelby says that it was okay that they made him leave. He was getting really pushy about what she ate and was cranky. I tried to call him and his mother, no answers. I left messages trying to explain. Of course, no calls back. Surprise!

Shelby was in the hospital until the afternoon of September 20th and then home on be rest after that. We had one failed attempt at returning to school on the 27th. She lasted 3 hours before her peak flow plummeted to 150 (lower than it had been in the hospital). She spent another week on bed rest and finally returned to school on October 4th.

Throughout this whole ordeal, I was reminded what wonderful friends I have. I am SO thankful for all of you. I love you all very much. I hope you know that! My sister came out two days in a row, and was such fun for Shelby. Traci & Debbi brought Shelby lots of goodies too. To my friends who stepped up and were there for me THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!!

Since SD was asked to leave the hospital, neither he nor his mother has called to check on my precious girl. Oh, his mom did call one day – called Shelby’s cell phone and proceeded to drill Shelby with stupid questions (lady, she’s in the HOSPITAL) and then hung up on her for no reason. Okay, so I had left a message earlier that day telling her to feel free to call ME if she wanted an update on Shelby’s health. I may have said “if you care at all” or something like that. I had also left messages for both SD & his mother letting them know that they could call me if they wanted to know anything and that I was sorry that things got so messed up at the hospital and it was not my intention at all. As if they even listened to the messages, right? Ugh!

I believe there has been one voicemail on Shelby’s cell from his mother. Something about “tight chest” stuff going around. I want to scream at the woman, this isn’t contagious! She had a SEVERE ASTHMA ATTACK and was IN THE HOSPITAL you stupid woman! But, no, I didn’t.

Through all of this, I worked. I worked from home, but I worked my ass off! I had to give Shelby her nebulizer treatment every 4 hours, so I would stay up past midnight every night to give her a treatment and I’d work. Apparently this was an issue, but I didn’t know until I returned to work. Things are okay now. I am truly blessed with a wonderful boss & co-workers and great job.

So yeah, it’s been a pretty exhausting few weeks. Don’t even get me started on the ambulance ride in July or the one LAST WEEK (all Shelby). Okay, short versions: July was after she hit her head; last week was an episode that the school nurse thought was another asthma attack. It resolved too quickly and the Asthma specialist thinks the episode last week was most likely Vocal Cord Dysfunction. Ahhhhhh, nothing simple for me or my kid! We go to see the asthma doc on Saturday; I’m also going to mention the VCD to Shelby’s therapist. Sounds like it is very common for people who have been through a traumatic event (like a 2 ½ week long asthma attack). Maybe I’ll do a post about it later on. I know you can’t wait! LOL!

In the midst of all of the medical crises, I wrote an important letter. That will be on a separate post.

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